The APA style manual
is not as rigid as it was when I was a graduate student. At that time, every
paper had to have sections titled Literature Review, Hypothesis, Method, Results,
Discussion, and so on. Today, the same ground gets covered but the APA appears
to be more flexible about section titles than days of old.

Nevertheless, for the
sake of your clarity, I'd like you to write a Hypothesis section (so labeled)
in which you state what the hypothesis is that you will be testing in your web
survey. A paragraph or two stating the rationale behind the hypothesis and then
the hypothesis, itself, will be sufficient.

Basically, a hypothesis
is a prediction. It is an educated guess as to how a scientific experiment will
turn out. It is an educated guess because it is based on previous research,
training, observation, and a review of the relevant research literature.

For the purposes of
this class, you will be doing a simple correlational study. Therefore, your
hypothesis will consist of a prediction about how two variables will vary in
relation to one another. You may predict that when Variable 1 is high, Variable
2 will also tend to be high, and when Variable 1 is low, Variable 2 will also
tend to be low. This relationship would be called a "positive correlation."
Or you may predict that when Variable 1 is high, Variable 2 will tend to be
low, and vice versa. This is called a "negative correlation" or "inverse
correlation."

Sample Hypotheses

Here are some examples
of simple hypotheses and how they might be worded in your report:

"It is predicted
that the salary level of adults will be positively correlated with a measure
of overall happiness."

"It is hypothesized
that a rating of how satisfied people are with their current salary will be
positively correlated with a measure of their overall happiness."

"it is predicted
scores on a scale rating the level of childhood trauma will be inversely correlated
with scores on a scale of overall adult happiness."

"It is hypothesized
that ratings on an optimism scale will be positively correlated with self-ratings
of job satisfaction."

Adding Some
Meat

The sample hypotheses
above are pretty bare bones. Your Hypothesis section will need a bit more meat
inasmuch as we don't want it to consist of a single sentence. Therefore, you
should lead into your hypothesis with a paragraph or two that provide the rationale
for the hypothesis. What is it in the literature and in your own observations
that leads to this hypothesis?

Notice that all the
examples above are based on rating scales. The reason for this is that you will
be asking at least two rating-scale sorts of questions in your survey which
you will later test for statistical correlation.